An Image and Processing Comparison Study of Antialiasing Methods

Context. Aliasing is a long standing problem in computer graphics. It occurs as the graphics card is unable to sample with an infinite accuracy to render the scene which causes the application to lose colour information for the pixels. This gives the objects and the textures unwanted jagged edges. Post-processing antialiasing methods is one way to reduce or remove these issues for real-time applications. Objectives. This study will compare two popular post-processing antialiasing methods that are used in modern games today, i.e., Fast approximate antialiasing (FXAA) and Submorphological antialiasing (SMAA). The main aim is to understand how both method work and how they perform compared to the other. Methods. The two methods are implemented in a real-time application using DirectX 11.0. Images and processing data is collected, where the processing data consists of the updating frequency of the rendering of screen known as frames per second (FPS), and the elapsed time on the graphics processing unit(GPU). Conclusions. FXAA shows difficulties in handling diagonal edges well but show only minor graphical artefacts in vertical and horizontal edges. The method can produce unwanted blur along edges. The edge pattern detection in SMAA makes it able to handle all directions well. The performance results conclude that FXAA do not lose a lot of FPS and is quick. FXAA is at least three times faster than SMAA on the GPU